Forgotten gaming gecko “Gex” finds new home in an Arleta game store
Once held proudly in the offices of a renowned developer, a statue of a long forgotten relic of video game history now takes up residence in a game store tucked away in the San Fernando Valley.
Hopping into the spotlight in 1995 for the ill-fated 3DO Interactive Multiplayer console, “Gex” was a video game platforming mascot character created by Crystal Dynamics, who were trying to make a name for themselves in a world dominated by the likes of Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. While Gex had a sizable fan base spanning numerous gaming platforms, the last entry in the Gexology would come with 1999’s “Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko”, and the series has laid dormant ever since.
The long and storied history of Crystal Dynamics (and by extension, Gex) actually begins with the 3DO, as their first developed game, Crash ‘n Burn, was the 3DO’s sole launch title back in 1993. The company would go on to develop and publish four other games for the system, but none of them really captured gamer audiences quite the same way as Gex would in the mid-1990s.
After its initial release, Gex would actually go on to become one of the best selling games to ever be released on the 3DO platform, establishing itself as a “Platinum Title” by the end of 1995 by selling more than 250,000 copies and winning “Best Action Game” the same year. Gex had essentially become the face of the 3DO, but it was too little too late as the 3DO’s insanely expensive $700 launch price scared off potential consumers. The console would be KIA by the end of the mid-1990s in North America. The potential 3DO follow up, Panasonic’s M2, would never see the light of day.
Surprisingly, Gex would not die with the 3DO as Crystal Dynamic’s snarky gecko went multiplatform. Gex would eventually appear on just about every mainline platform, bridging the gap between Playstation, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Sega Saturn and Person Computer gamers.
Crystal Dynamics also went the extra mile and put special care into making their wise-cracking gecko as globally appealing as they possibly could. Different regions across the world had their own tailor-made Gex, portrayed by the likes of stand-up comedian Dana Gould in the United States and television stars Leslie Phillips and Danny John Jules in the United Kingdom.
But Crystal Dynamics has long since moved on from Gex. Since the final entry’s release over 24 years ago, the game developing titan is now currently working on games in the rebooted Tomb Raider series, the recent Marvel’s Avengers game and the upcoming Perfect Dark entry produced by Microsoft.
Much of the staff that worked on the series have moved on to more recognizable works, such as Glen Schofield (director of the second and third Gex entries) who would be the executive producer of the original Dead Space and direct its recent spiritual successor, The Callisto Protocol. Even Evan Wells, who was one of the original programmers for the first two Gex games, left Crystal Dynamics to become a co-president of Naughty Dog (creators of The Last of Us, Uncharted and Gex’s old marsupial rival, Crash Bandicoot).
These days, Gex has garnered a sort of cult following on the internet amongst video game enthusiasts. A YouTube video depicting the character as a 90s cartoon released in June of 2022 by FlippinDingDong managed to garner nearly a million views.
One such Gex fan is Dillion Thorp, owner of the video game store Retro Respawn, who came across a rare piece of Gex memorabilia: a one of a kind statue of the green gecko that once resided in the Crystal Dynamics offices.
According to Thorp, the life-sized Gex statue was in the possession of a Microsoft representative who had won it in a charity auction for around 2,000 dollars, the same price Thorp would pay to acquire it for himself.
“I had someone, a middleman, basically connect me through a console variant Discord,” Thorp said. “That would be not where you’d sell that normally, you’d sell this on a kiosk website. So he was asking for a lot cheaper than probably what it would have gone for.”
However, Thorp didn’t know the true value of the statue until he dug a bit deeper into its history.
“Originally I was going to pass on it till I did my own research on it,” Thorp said, “Which when I found out it was one-of-one, I was like ‘Well I’ll only get one chance, so I’m gonna get it’.”
Once sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft, this rare and surprisingly weighty Gex statue now sits front and center at Retro Respawn, being one of the first things potential customers see when they enter the store.
“It’s crazy because there are so many different layers to him,” Thorp said. “A lot of him is made out of some sort of polymer clay, so he’s heavier than most things. He wasn’t supposed to be moved around everywhere. He was supposed to stay put forever.”
While many of the customers that shop at Retro Respawn aren’t all too familiar with the 90’s mascot, Thorp notes that there is a fair amount of people who do. But Thorp has his own sentimental reasons for keeping the Gex statue instead of pawning it off to other prospective buyers.
“It’s a childhood game,” Thorp said. “He [Gex] really represents the 90s. You won’t see a character like that designed today.”
While Gex may be a product of his time, it has not stopped people from showing their affinity towards the tux-wearing reptile. This past January, Itch.io (a platform in which independent game developers can publish and share their work) held a “Gex Jam” for the second annual “Gex Week”, which challenged its participants to create a piece of Gex fan media in little over a week.
Gex-mania has yet to catch on with mainstream audiences, and Crystal Dynamics’s former mascot remains only as a cult favorite among fans of niche, kitschy media from the 1990s. However, after Crystal Dynamics released a survey regarding its other dormant franchise from the 90s, Legacy of Kain, hope remains among Gex enthusiasts that it will be “Tail Time” once again.
